Any time you travel through a place called "The Trent Hills" you know you must BEWARE! The Trent Hills are actually hillocks--it looks like they just got dropped in here from above all over the place! But the roads just go straight--up and down each and every hillock! We were sure that with proper planning, those roads could have been completely flat, but instead we did a LOT of climbing and descending in the morning.
The owners at Lockside gave us some scones to sustain us on our trip (they have an ice cream and coffee shop as well as a decor store there in Hastings). We took our leave from this nice town, and as we started the ride, we were very glad we had stayed in Hastings, because we would have had a lot of trouble with these hills at the end of a long day. We saw some beautiful scenery (a mix of little farms and towns with great architecture) and had very little traffic.
At the top of the second hill, I came upon David looking down at his bike. He was OK, but his front rack was broken! The bolt had sheared, and of course it broke off in the fork so he couldn't put another one in. So out came the zip ties and duct tape, and 15 minutes later, it was almost as good as new! Thank God for duct tape!
We were both grinding granny gears going up those steep hills, but today for every uphill, we got a downhill. That was nice (except sometimes you'd be going down and could see the next big hill looming ahead). It was fun riding--similar to what we used to do in Virginia. We took a final backroad into Trenton and were very excited to see the waters of Lake Onterio's North Bay (called the Bay of Quinte).
We looked around Trenton a bit and it seemed to be a pretty industrial place. We did find a good place for lunch called the Britannia. Good British-style food and ale! They told us about a bike shop about 10 miles away in Belleville, so we worked our way there to find out information about bike routes. We had heard there was a good one that goes all the way to Quebec! Well, they didn't know anything about it there, so we were disappointed that we will have to continue on Rt. 2 until New York. It's not too busy because there is a close-by freeway, but it's still busier than we had wished for. We wandered through Belleville and found another bike shop in the main part of town. Those folks were very nice and suggested some routes for us--and also pointed us toward the local organic coffee shop. We debated taking a slightly longer route that would have been very scenic, but decided it was too late in the day, and booked for Naponee, our evening's destination.
Along the water, we had no hills and a slight tailwind. That made for fast riding! We got into Naponee by about 5:30 and then started searching for a place to stay. This is a town that has been decimated by the freeway. The main part of town is almost non-existent, and we ended up having to go back to the freeway to find a hotel. The Hampton Inn is very nice (that's where I'm blogging from) and new, but the choices for food are slim. There's a McDonald's, a Pizza Hut, and a DQ (OK at least we like DQ). We walked over a mile to get to a local fish & chips place, and it was HOT and HUMID! I felt like I needed another shower! And we found to our dismay that these fish and chips places fry everything! You have no real other choices. So fried food it was--and it was tasty.
We walked along the busy roads and under the freeway to get back to our hotel, and were happy to have Le Tour to entertain us until we went to sleep!
We're both about ready to be done with the ride--but we have more than 500 miles to go. Onward!
P.S. We FINALLY found a computer where we could load pictures (note me with the SMART Car above) and I have put pictures into every day since Munising--just go backwards if you want to look at them! It's mostly those days in Canada...
